Quaeryt extended his shields, as he did ordering, “Imager shields!”
Simultaneously, arrows sleeted from the upper ledge down toward first company.
Pain hammered at Quaeryt’s skull from the effort of holding shields and trying to gouge out a large chunk of the mountainside. Even as he watched, the reddish stone immediately below the ledge vanished, but only a thin line perhaps a yard wide and deep. Then the stone above that shivered and cracks began to form, widening and growing, and the lower ledge began to crumble.
For a moment Quaeryt just held his shields, trying to shield the company from the arrows, and to recover from the effort of trying to handle two imaging efforts at once. Then he saw that one of the catapults was already in motion. He immediately imaged away a support on the far side of the device. While he’d hoped that would have flung the Antiagon Fire along the ledge, instead it just dropped onto the ledge and exploded into the telltale crimson-yellow-green flame. Then the lower ledge crumbled, and Antiagon troopers flailed as they lost their footing and slid down the sandstone toward the base of the gorge … and the roadway below.
The archers on the upper ledge had begun to aim their shafts farther to the east, at the first companies of Third Regiment, well beyond the shields of first company.
Then … fire grenades appeared from somewhere else, exploding into flame against the imager shields.
“To the west! Behind those scrubby pines!” called out an undercaptain-Voltyr, Quaeryt realized.
The scrubby pines to which Voltyr pointed hadn’t been there a moment before-or, rather, they’d been concealed by an imaging shield of some sort, as had the Antiagons working the second set of catapults.
“Iron darts!” ordered Quaeryt, even as he concentrated on intercepting fire grenades and imaging them at the upper ledge and the archers there.
While some of the imagers managed darts, many of the Antiagons working on the fire grenade catapults ducked below the sandstone ledge wall before the Telaryn imagers could create the darts so that a handful of darts clunked against the soft stone, gouging shallow holes and spraying reddish sand.
A line of Antiagon Fire flared across the ledge holding the archers, and several jumped over the ends of the wall and tried to slide down the sandstone away from the rubble of the first ledge below them. One seemed to manage it, and immediately began to run down the road to the west. Another lost control and tumbled head over heels into an unmoving lump at the bottom of the gorge. Others skidded into the rugged rocks that filled the gouge beneath the first ledge that Quaeryt had destroyed.
Quaeryt returned his attention to the remaining catapults, where he did manage to return two or three of the fire grenades. Before long, Antiagon Fire was raging behind the ledge wall on the emplacement west of the pine trees.
Then Quaeryt saw a shower of rock cascading down from the north slope of the road cut … and above that a larger mass of stone breaking loose from somewhere.
Immediately he thought about drawing heat from somewhere to support his imaging-but there was nothing to draw from. The rock hadn’t absorbed that much sunlight, and there was no water anywhere. Still … he concentrated on creating an angled wall into place, no more than a yard and a half high, running from the east to west as it descended along the northern sandstone slope. Waves of pain cascaded over him, and he doubled over in the saddle, with flashes of light burning into his skull.
All he could do was watch as the chunks of sandstone and other rock cascaded downslope toward his angled barrier.
The first and smaller rocks hit the wall and largely bounced westward, and downhill. So did most of what followed, but more than a few stray rocks and boulders bounced over the barrier and rolled or slid down into the gorge-building up next to the sandstone wall.
Dust followed, and when that began to clear, Quaeryt took a deep breath.
Most of the rocks and rubble had not reached the road. Even so, there was a mass almost a yard high and twenty yards long covering the roadbed, beginning some fifteen yards ahead of where first company had stopped. Beyond that rubble Quaeryt could see several scouts and outriders, but he had no idea if all of them had escaped. He could only hope.
Even as a last skitter of rocks slid to a stop atop the pile of rock partially blocking the road, Quaeryt kept looking around, ignoring the pain and flashes in his vision, seeing yet another Antiagon defensive emplacement. Where the first walled ledge had been there was only an angular and blacked gash in the sloped sandstone, its base partly filled with boulders and fragments of sandstone, some blackened. Above that, the upper ledge was blackened and empty. Above the top of the gash, where the original ledge had been, Quaeryt saw an oblong opening, with what looked to be stairs behind it. That’s how they got there.
He kept looking, but could see no sign of any surviving Antiagons. There were no more fire grenades and no more archers. Nor was there any sign of more rockslides. Had the one been triggered by an imager? Quaeryt had no way of knowing and even sending someone to the top of the gorge wall likely wouldn’t reveal anything. Still … they probably needed to have a squad investigate the tunnels to the ledges and see what lay behind them.
“That was something.”
Quaeryt turned in the saddle to see Skarpa rein up.
The submarshal looked at the mass of rubble covering the road, then at the blackened ledges, and finally at Quaeryt. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, not exactly. I just knew it had to be an attack that relied on something other than a mass of troopers. When I couldn’t see shadows where there should have been shadows…”
Skarpa raised his eyebrows.
Quaeryt went on to explain, then said, “Then there was the attack outside of Barna. They used barely trained troopers. The first Antiagon Fire attack-that took an imager and no more than twenty troopers. And … Antiago is a smaller land that makes most of its wealth from trading. Traders don’t like to spend any more than they have to. Antiago has never had to maintain that many troopers, and I doubt Aliaro has that many to spare. So … he won’t hazard them until he has to. Also, the more he can weaken us without using his best, the more likely they’ll be able to turn us away.”
“That would be a victory of sorts for him. He has to know that we’re not equipped for a long siege or attack on Liantiago.”
“He knows that and so do we.”
Skarpa gestured toward the remaining ledges cut into the soft sandstone walls, ledges blacked and charred, with the remnants of Antiagons and catapults. “That’s almost an unassailable position.”
“They didn’t think about having their own Fire used against them.”
“Or your having imagers strong enough to cut away the stone under their feet.” Skarpa’s eyes went to the rubble beside and partially covering the road.
“The imagers can remove that, but you might want to send a company to investigate how the Antiagons got to those ledges.”
“I already have,” replied Skarpa. “I also told them to bring in anyone they capture.”
“That would help in knowing how many imagers they have and how good they are.”
“Do you think they used imagers to cut those ledges just for us?”
“I wondered that at first, but I don’t think so. They were likely imaged, but not recently. There are trees growing in places that suggest the ledges were created some time ago. Also there are rivulets and channels in the sandstone that were made by rain. All that takes time. They might have used imagers recently to improve the old ledges and walls.”
“How long will it take to clear this?”
“Less than two glasses, I’d judge, but we’ll have to see.”
“If you could make a narrow path first…”
“To get the scouts and a vanguard through? We can do that.” Quaeryt nodded.
Once Skarpa headed back to Third Regiment, Quaeryt turned to the undercaptains. “We’ve got some road-clearing to do. We’ll begin with a narrow path wide enough for a single mount.�
� He gestured. “Threkhyl … Horan … you two start. Remove the rocks and earth in smaller piles. There’s more to image away than meets the eye.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the two imagers began to image away rock and sand, Quaeryt looked westward and downhill, but he could not make out either the bay or Liantiago.
By the time the imagers had cleared the road, and the scouting parties had returned with but a handful of surviving Antiagon troopers, it was past noon before Southern Army emerged from the bottom of the gorge and began to ride along a section of the road that sloped down, if ever so gradually, toward a lower line of hills. Those hills, unlike the irregular sandstone hills, were green with spring grass and intermittent olive orchards. The villas were also larger, and Quaeryt could make out several hamlets, although all were on lanes back off the main paved road by at least a mille, if not more, and most seemed to be located on or near slopes that showed rocky outcroppings, suggesting that where the common people built was controlled in some fashion, either by the Shahibs or the Autarch or even by a certain popular reluctance to be too close to the main road.
Before all that long, Skarpa rejoined Quaeryt, since first company remained as the vanguard.
“What did you discover from the captives?” asked Quaeryt.
“Not too much. Their commander sent two companies and two imagers. One company was of archers, and the other was of catapultists. Supposedly one imager was a master and the other his assistant. They were told to destroy the attackers and return.” Skarpa snorted.
“Did they believe that was possible with so small a force?”
“Some did, it appears. That’s not likely to happen again. At least a squad escaped with the master imager. You or your imagers got the assistant…”
That suggests that the master imager might have some sort of shields, thought Quaeryt.
“There’s a hidden back trail down to the main road. One of the companies from second battalion found it, but the Antiagons were so far gone that even their dust had settled.”
“So it’s likely they know we have imagers, and the size of our force,” said Quaeryt, “but not necessarily how many imagers. Did any of the captives know how many imagers there might be in Liantiago?”
“I did ask, but all they could tell me was that the imagers lived in special walled quarters inside the palace walls, and that only a few ever left Liantiago. None of them had ever seen more than two imagers together-almost always a master and his apprentice.”
Quaeryt frowned. Was that a form of dissimulation? Or did it represent how Antiagon imagers were trained?
“You have that look…”
“A master and apprentice system…” Quaeryt shook his head. “That sounds too traditional … but maybe it’s merely a pretense to avoid people asking too many questions.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not for now,” replied Quaeryt. But it’s something to look into, especially why the Autarch uses that system … if he even does.
Skarpa, Quaeryt, and first company continued to lead the way along the well-kept paved road. After they had ridden another glass, they came to the crest of a low rise, beyond which were low rolling hills, covered with already green pastures or meadows, that extended from just below him to the outskirts of Liantiago some five milles away.
Skarpa called a halt, after which he and Quaeryt surveyed the terrain before them. Liantiago was located on the southeastern end of a sheltered bay that extended more than a hundred milles from the Gulf of Khellor. In the center of the bay was the island of Westisle, itself some forty milles long and five to eight across. The size and sheltered nature of the bay provided the best port and anchorage in all of Lydar. All that Quaeryt recalled from his years at sea. What he didn’t recall was the size of Liantiago, stretching as it did more than five milles along a curving shoreline. What he also did not recall was the imposing stone complex that dominated a low hill rising from the middle on the northern end of the city and overlooking the harbor. That had to be Aliaro’s palace, what with its white stone walls and fortifications.
White stone? That suggested stone hardened and shaped by experienced and talented imagers. While it was clear that Aliaro had imagers, what Quaeryt and Skarpa had no way of knowing was how many the Autarch might have … or how accomplished they might be. The stone fortifications suggested both numbers and talent … but had the walls been built in the past … or more recently?
“Makes Variana and Solis look small,” observed Skarpa.
“It does. It’s also interesting that there aren’t any other cities in Liantiago of any size.”
“With one that size, why would the autarchs need any more?”
“The autarchs might not, but the traders and merchants and people might.”
“Meaning what?” asked Skarpa.
“That the Autarch doesn’t want too many people too far away from him, suggesting that he doesn’t have that effective a government for controlling large groups of people at a distance. That might make matters easier for Bhayar to rule here.”
“There’s the small matter of defeating Aliaro’s forces before we can consider that,” said Skarpa dryly.
Quaeryt laughed lightly. “You’re right about that.”
64
Once below the gorge, the road that led to Liantiago through the remaining lower and gentler hills turned out to be wider. It was also paved in hard white stone and wide enough for three wagons abreast, with room to spare. Although the lines of the stone were sharp and clean, from the way the turf from which the hot-weather grasses sprouted had been cut back and from the occasional large mansions and small palaces set back from the road, each with elaborate gates-all closed-and paved lanes cut into the gentle hillside, it was clear that the road dated back some considerable time.
If not so far back as the roads of the Naedarans, thought Quaeryt. Had some of the Naedarans fled to Antiago? Or had Aliaro’s imagers come from elsewhere?
While it was hard to determine, given their distance from the main road, most of the imposing structures appeared shuttered, and not a single wisp of smoke rose from any chimney, as if most inhabitants had either fled or were hiding within. Nor had Quaeryt seen any individual even on more distant lanes or fields. In fact, he had seen no livestock, not even a dog.
Just ahead of first company, the road curved gently to the north around the base of another hill, one planted at the top with oil nut trees. Some hundred yards to the south of the road was a depression not quite deep enough to be a gorge or a canyon but too narrow to be a valley and too deep to be a mere swale, at the bottom of which was a small stream. Quaeryt judged that the miniature canyon/valley was perhaps two hundred yards across and fifteen to twenty yards deep. Just deep enough and steep enough to make it a barrier to any sort of maneuver.
Even before the outriders reached the point where the road began to curve to the west-northwest, Skarpa rode up and ordered a halt, then eased his mount over beside Quaeryt. “About a mille ahead, at the top of a slight rise, between that hill and that valley to the south, there’s a wall right across the road. The wall looks to be a half mille long. The stonework on each side of the road towers looks old. The wall between the towers looks new. The scouts report that there might be at least several regiments there.”
“So they imaged a short section of wall between the towers?”
“Or they built it quickly,” replied Skarpa sardonically.
“Is there any way to go around the wall?” asked Quaeryt.
“Either down through the valley or uphill through the oil nut trees. I imagine that they’re ready to fire the trees themselves if we tried that.”
“So why don’t we fire the trees … and wait?”
“I’d thought about that, but … unless you or your imagers could do that, we’d likely lose a lot of men even trying to get close.”
“I assume that there’s no other easy or short way to get around the wall.”
“I’ve had the scouts search
ing, but there’s another gorge to the north…”
“So we’d have to retrace our way up the gorge that holds the main road and then find another road down to Liantiago?”
“If there is one,” said Skarpa. “We didn’t see any signs of main roads. There are likely farm roads or lanes, but they’ll be narrow.”
“And we might face another force if we attempted riding back up into the gorge. Or some other kind of trap.”
“Even if we didn’t, trying to reach Liantiago on back roads gives them more of an advantage.”
“But not more than the advantage of fortifications,” Quaeryt pointed out.
“I was hoping you and the imagers…”
“I’d have to look to see what might be possible.”
“I thought you might. That’s why I called a halt,” said Skarpa. “You’re not to do it by yourself with just a squad.”
“I’ll take Khalis and Horan.”
“Not Voltyr?”
“You’ll need him if anything happens while we’re gone.” Quaeryt turned to Zhelan. “Major … I’ll need a squad to accompany me and two undercaptains on a scouting mission.”
“Yes, sir. Third squad is ready.”
“Thank you.” Quaeryt looked back. “Undercaptains Khalis and Horan, forward!”
As Horan reined up beside Quaeryt, his face held a slightly puzzled expression, while Khalis offered a tentative smile.
Quaeryt ignored both expressions. “Once we near the curve in the road, Khalis, I want a concealment shield over the squad. If at any time you think you can’t maintain it, let me know before that happens. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Horan … I want you to study the hill to the north and the valley to the south. I need to know whether you can remove a section of the hill wide enough for a battalion to ride along such a cut around the end of the wall. I’d also like your thoughts on a bridge across the valley short of the wall and another one back across farther west and behind the wall.”
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